Bipartisan lawmakers set to unveil bill to reopen DHS, bar ICE from wearing masks

A bipartisan group of House lawmakers is poised to unveil legislation that combines funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with tougher rules for federal immigration enforcement officers. 

Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.), the leaders of the Problem Solvers Caucus, are putting the final touches on a proposal that would reopen DHS, after weeks of being shut down, while establishing new guardrails governing the conduct of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Fitzpatrick said they’re aiming to introduce the bill Friday.

As a sweetener for Democrats, the list of ICE reforms goes beyond the offer made by Senate Republicans and the Trump administration, to include a ban on face masks and new warrant requirements preceding arrests.

To entice Republicans, it couples the mask prohibition, a chief demand of Democrats, with harsher criminal penalties for doxing federal officers, which has been a top concern among GOP lawmakers.

The bill arrives as party leaders in the Senate have traded proposals for reopening DHS throughout the week, with all of them rejected by the other side. 

In an effort to break the long impasse, members of the Problem Solvers Caucus huddled Thursday in the basement of the Capitol Visitors Center to discuss their emerging legislation. Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) also joined the meeting. 

Afterward, Fitzpatrick said the key to a deal is focusing the reforms on the branches of ICE that deal specifically with enforcement and removal operations, not other parts of the DHS that traditionally have no direct role in interior enforcement operations, such as Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).  

“Some of my Democrat colleagues are trying to loop in CBP, HSI, which has nothing to do with this,” Fitzpatrick said after the meeting. “It’s enforcement and removal operations within ICE — it’s a very specific piece of ICE. That’s the issue that we need to fix.”

It’s unclear if Democrats, especially liberals, are ready to sign on. Some Democrats are wary that, under President Trump’s DHS, HSI agents are actively assisting ICE with removal operations. And while CBP typically sticks with border enforcement, Trump’s deportation surge featured a deployment of CBP officers into blue cities like Minneapolis, where two of them killed protestor Alex Pretti. 

On Wednesday, the leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) had warned that they won’t support any DHS deal that funds ICE and CBP without the adoption of all the Democrats’ reform demands.

“The Congressional Progressive Caucus’s position is that leadership in the House and the Senate — and rank-and-file Democrats in the House and the Senate — need to stick to our position, which is the American people’s position, that we’re not going to give ICE and CBP billions more dollars until there are dramatic reforms so we can prevent the killing of more citizens like Alex Pretti,” said CPC Chairman Greg Casar (D-Texas).

Aside from the mask and warrant provisions, the Fitzpatrick-Suozzi bill will also expand the use of body cameras, ban warrantless raids on sensitive areas like schools and hospitals, and allow for independent investigations of cases when federal officers are accused of excessive use of force.

“[It’s] pretty much what they’ve been asking for,” Fitzpatrick said of Democrats. 

Resistance is also bubbling up from the right. Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, said this week that he won’t enforce any move to ban face masks, warning that it would put ICE officers at risk of attacks. 

“You want us to give up masks, well, you know what? No we’re not…,” Homan said Wednesday in an interview with the “Cats & Cosby Show” on WABC 770 AM. “I’m not putting one ICE officer at risk.”

Fitzpatrick said he hasn’t been in direct communication with Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) or other GOP leaders about the legislation. But, he added, “They know what we’re working on.”

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